Nelleke Smit | Contemporary Artist: Artworks & Biography

The faces, bodies and landscapes painted by Nelleke Smit blend together in a swirl of colours, sunlight and floral motifs, at the heart of explosive, intense and warm compositions. A self-taught artist, Smit trained herself in the practising of art and its nuances, trying pastels, watercolours and gouache in turn. It is, however, acrylics and oil paints that she chooses to use in her work as these allow subtle variation of shading and outlines.
Originally working on wallpaper, then later on canvas and on wood, Nelleke Smit considers each project to be an experience, an exercise, a trial page that becomes satisfying as it illustrates an emotion or a sensation. Forms, silhouettes, shadows: their testimonies are subjective translations, impressions that she recreates based on reality. Landscapes or portraits become subjects of a sensitive distortion, of a new gaze that deconstructs then recreates by means of the surreal view of the artist.
Nelleke Smit creates her paintings quickly and in one sitting, inscribing her work in a transient and elusive time. She forbids herself to look back and make any attempt to rationalise her movements, and so she devotes herself to a temporal experience that excludes all consideration and reflection and puts pure sensation first. “I don’t think about the colours. They come almost by themselves; I think in clear and dark tones,” she confirms.
Free, the painter does not claim any artistic paternity and no reference to a trend or group. Her garden and her interior world are the driving force of a rich palette, an instrument made of a pure emotional mechanism.